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I have become slightly obsessed with a Tom Waits song, Whistle Down the Wind.
Definitely not the saccharine Lloyd Webber musical of the same name.
This song, which Waits croaks in a voice curdled by 3am bourbon, is about a
guy stuck in a rut but too scared to leave the town he’s lived in all his
life. He senses that “the world is on fire”. He dreams of seeing “blue-eyed
girls and red guitars”. But he’s “stuck like a shipwreck”. It’s a song that
strikes a chord with anyone who feels trapped in a stifling environment when
there’s a